Crossing the Over-Under Line [With Caveat By John]

Over at Breitbart John Nolte points to a new AP-GFK poll showing Obama’s approval rating sagging to 37 percent. AP-GFK is a fairly straight up polling outfit I think; if anything, they bend in a liberal direction. So this poll should be a wakeup call for the White House. But as Nolte points out, don’t expect the mainstream media to pick up this point:

There is no good news in this poll for anyone, but if past is prologue, this is the number the media will pretend does not exist as they attempt to manufacture a reality where only the GOP is in trouble over the shutdown.

While the poll shows that 62% blame the GOP for the shutdown and “[a]bout half said Obama or the Democrats in Congress bear much responsibility. . .”

A full 52% of those polled believe “Obama is not doing enough to cooperate with Republicans to end the shutdown; 63 percent say Republicans aren’t doing enough to cooperate with him.”

Obviously, there is a pox on both houses happening here, but the headline of this poll from the AP and other publications distributing it, including the Washington Post, is “GOP Gets the Blame In Shutdown.”

The important point here is that the 40 percent approval mark is typically the Point of No Return for presidents. It was for President Bush. It’s the over-under line. Even a foreign crisis or foreign policy triumph won’t likely help Obama over the long haul (just ask Jimmy Carter) if there isn’t a resolution to the current standoff that ameliorates his peevishness, which is becoming more outrageous to Americans as they take in blocked off open-air monuments, etc.

JOHN adds: I’d like to believe it, but I’m afraid this poll is an outlier. Gallup has Obama rebounding to 46/48, while Rasmussen has him doing even better, at 50/49. While there is quite a bit of volatility at the moment, in my view the polls, taken as a whole, suggest that Obama’s battle with the Republicans hasn’t hurt his standing with the public, and may have helped it.